March 2021, a year into the global COVID-19 pandemic, Brazil had reached a breaking point, with the virus spreading quickly, causing a near collapse of their medical system. Amidst the situation, the world kept turning and Eneva, one of our customers in the region, requested we move the outage begin date for the Parnaiba II power plant a month earlier than planned. The job consisted of 2 Hot-Gas Path Inspections (HGPi) for 7FA.04 turbine and 1 generator end-winding repair. These machines provide enough power to light +400,000 Brazilian homes and are key assets to our customer.
Immediately, our team began working tirelessly to mobilize our field crew as well as all the necessary resources to meet our customer’s requirements and schedule. However, they faced a series of challenges that threatened the on-time delivery commitment, including COVID-19 travelling restrictions and the fact that there were several other ongoing outages in Latin America, making it hard to put together the execution team. Nonetheless, and thanks to the hard work from the planning team and our customer, we were able to obtain emergency visas to successfully mobilize everyone on time.
The outcome? Most importantly, everyone went back home safely, the units were delivered with great quality, we delivered to customer on time, and we accomplished the Hoshin Kanri program for 7F gas turbines, where the company setup a well-defined strategy of planning and execution for 7Fs to achieve On-time Delivery with productivity, no injuries, and no quality defects, improving employee satisfaction and engagement. Designing a healthy path to success for short and medium terms.
Our customer stated that they were very satisfied with the outage execution, thanks to the fast response from our teams to mobilize all resources efficiently and according to schedule despite having little time to do so. They also highlighted our commitment to safety and our discipline to comply with procedures, on-time service, planning of parts and quality. Thanks to our hard work, our customer was able to increase their availability in the National GRID, generating more electricity for the people of Brazil.
